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Family Memory and Private Archives in the Soviet Twentieth Century*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Igor Narsky
Igor Narsky*
Affiliation:
South Ural State University
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Abstract

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This article examines two sets of private family archives and the diaries they contain. The authors included items from their own archives throughout their texts. What was their goal in inserting photographs, fragments of letters, official documents, and private papers into these texts? Can this practice shed light on the mechanisms of construction and preservation of family identity as well as on communication within families in the Soviet Union, a perspective that has otherwise remained inaccessible using other sources?

Type
Cultural Transformations
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , June 2013 , pp. 327 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © Les Éditions de l’EHESS 2013

Footnotes

*

This article is accompanied by photographs available under the heading “Complementary Reading” on the Annales website: http://annales.ehess.fr.

References

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30. Ibid., 92.

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35. Guschker, Bilderwelt und Lebenswirklichkeit, 268.

36. Bourdieu, Pierre, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 67 Google Scholar. This passage was translated by Richard Nice.

37. Pukhal’skaia, “Zhizn’ sem’i,” 171.

38. Guschker, Bilderwelt und Lebenswirklichkeit.

39. For example, see: Semenova, Viktoriia and Foteeva, Ekaterina, eds., Sud’by liudei. Rossiia, XX vek. Biografii semei kak ob’’ekt sotsiologicheskogo issledovaniia (Moscow: IS RAN, 1996)Google Scholar.

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44. For more details on the illusory nature of biographies, see: Bourdieu, “The Biographical Illusion,” trans. Winkin, Yves and Leeds-Hurwitz, Wendy, in Identity: A Reader, eds. Gay, Paul du, Evans, Jessica, and Redman, Peter (London: SAGE Publications, 2001), 297–303 Google Scholar; Blazejewski, , Bild und Text Google Scholar; and Guschker, Bilderwelt und Lebenswirklichkeit.

45. For more details on the role of photographs in family communication, see: Guschker, , Bilderwelt und Lebenswirklichkeit Google Scholar; Hirsch, Marianne, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

46. For more details on the specificities of “photographic texts,” see Blazejewski, Bild und Text, 58.

47. Barthes, Roland, “L’effet de réel,” Communications 11 (1968): 84–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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49. On the characteristics of “naïve” texts, see: Kozlova, Nataliia and Sandomirskaia, Irina, “Ia tak khochu nazvat’ kino.” Naivnoe pis’mo: opyt lingvosotsiologicheskogo chteniia (Moscow: Gnosis, 1996 Google Scholar); Kozlova, Sovetskie liudi.

50. On the Bestuzhev women’s college in Saint Petersburg and on women’s colleges in late imperial Russia in general, see: Ivanov, Anatolii E., Vysshaia shkola v Rossii v kontse 19- nachale 20 v. (Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1991 Google Scholar); Nadezhda I. Kozlova, Iz istorii zhenskogo obrazovaniia v Sankt-Peterburge (Saint Petersburg: Petropolis, 1996).

51. Arkhipova, “Karl Marks,” 188-89.

52. A character in Leo Tolstoy’s play The Living Corpse, which was first published posthumously in 1913.

53. Bulgakova, Agniia Ivanovna, “Priezd v Kaliazin. Priezd v Tver” (unpublished manuscript, Tashkent, 1954 Google Scholar), notebook no. 10.

54. On the scope of the repressions directed at Soviets of Polish origin in 1936-1938, see Rotfeld, Adam D. and Torkunov, Anatolii V., eds., Belye piatna-chernye piatna: Slozhnye voprosy v rossiisko-pol’skikh otnosheniiakh (Moscow: Aspekt Press, 2010), 122–25.Google Scholar

55. However, a trip to Yerevan by one of Pukhal’skii’s Polish relatives in the summer of 1968, when Soviet tanks were invading Prague, was vigorously discussed by him and Bulgakova (or Geta, her family nickname): “Matei kept repeating emotionally: ‘It’s an occupation, an occupation.’ Like a Soviet who trusts official reports, Geta replied: ‘It’s international assistance.’ Their conversations often ended in arguments. Naturally, Matei was right.” Pukhal’skaia, “Zhizn’ sem’i,” 140. That she agreed with Matei in text written in the 2000s does not mean that Pukhal’skaia held the same opinion in 1968.

56. Khar’kova, , “Vospominaniia rossiianki,” 239.Google Scholar

57. Ibid.

58. Ibid.

59. On the prohibition of Christmas trees in the context of Soviet antireligious campaigns, see Sal’nikova, Alla, Istoriia elochnoi igrushki (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2011).Google Scholar

60. Khar’kova, , “Vospominaniia rossiianki,” 117.Google Scholar

61. On Soviet childhood, see: Brine, Jenny et al., eds., Home, School, and Leisure in the Soviet Union, (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1980 Google Scholar); Valerii V. Bogdanov, Istoriia shkolnykh veshchei (Saint Petersburg: Karo, 2003); Alla Sal’nikova, Rossiiskoe detstvo v 20 veke: Istoriia, teoriia i praktika issledovaniia (Kazan: Kazanskii universitet, 2007); Maria V. Osorina, Sekretnyi mir detei v prostranstve mira vzroslykh (Saint Petersburg: Piter, 2011); and Catriona Kelly, Children’s World: Growing Up in Russia, 1890-1991 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).

62. Khar’kova, “Vospominaniia rossiianki,” 385.

63. On the formation of Soviet pedagogical norms in the 1930, see: Beyrau, Dietrich, Intelligenz und Dissens: Die russischen Bildungsschichten in der Sowjetunion 1917 bis 1985 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 73–155 Google Scholar; Kelly, Children’s World. In the chapter of her memoirs devoted to the years 1947-1951, Pukhal’skaia provides the following details: “We lived all those years in Tashkent with little information, as news about the country and the world came only from the local radio station and one Russian newspaper, Pravda of the East (Pravda Vostoka). Only in early 1948, when Abram received a Vostok radio set for the hard work he had done in 1947, were we able to listen to the Moscow news (which in fact was scarce and carefully controlled). By changing the set’s frequency, we could get music and concerts from as far away as Brazzaville in the French Congo, which in itself was a miracle. Since then, we have given greater attention to geography in the children’s education. We hung large geographical maps of every part of the world on the walls.” Pukhal’skaia, “Zhizn’ sem’i,” 73.

64. Ibid., 47.

65. Ibid., 144.

66. Basiny detki, 5, 1951-1952, in Pukhal’skaia, “Zhizn’ sem’i.”

67. Khar’kova, “Vospominaniia rossiianki,” 159-60.

68. On the role of “terrifying stories” in overcoming childhood fears, see Osorina, Sekretnyi mir detei, 77-89.

69. Ibid.

70. On the creation of images during the Civil War, see: Narsky, Zhizn’ v katastrofe; Narsky, , “Bürgerkrieg—zur Konstruktion eines Gründungsmythos im frühen Sowjetrussland (Ural 1917-1922),” in Der Krieg in den Gründungsmythen europäischer Nationen und der USA, eds. Buschmann, Nikolaus and Langewiesche, Dieter (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 2003), 320–30.Google Scholar

71. On the narrow chronological framework of family memory in contemporary Russia, see: Langenohl, , Erinnerung und Modernisierung;Google Scholar Narsky et al., Vek pamiati; and Narsky, Fotokartochka na pamiat’.

72. Khar’kova, “Vospominaniia rossiianki,” 363-64.

73. On the difficulties of identifying the “Soviet” character of Soviet culture, including the culture of manipulating the past, see: Langenohl, Erinnerung und Modernisierung; Narsky, Fotokartochka na pamiat’, 369-77.

74. Khmelevskaia, “Vvedenie,” 8.

75. See Narsky, Fotokartochka na pamiat’.

76. For more details on the conflicts and tensions between generations, see: Bude, Heinz, “Die biographische Relevanz der Generation,” in Generationen in Familie und Gesellschaft, eds. Kohli, Martin and Szidlik, Marc (Opladen: Leske/Budrich, 2000), 19–35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hirsch, Family Frames; Yurii A. Levada, “Pokoleniia 20 veka: Vozmozhnosti issledovaniia,” in Ottsy i deti. Pokolencheskii analiz sovremennoi Rossii, eds. Yurii A. Levada and Teodor Shanin (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2005), 32-60.

77. I refer the reader to my previous work: Igor Narsky, “Refleksii o refleksiiakh, ili detskie istorii vzroslogo istorika,” in Detstvo v nauchnykh, obrazovatel’nykh i khudozhestvennykh tekstakh. Opyt prochteniia i interpretatsii, ed. Alla Sal’nikova (Kazan: izdatel’stvo Kazanskogo universiteta, 2010), 55-60; and Narsky, “‘Budushchee-v-proshlom’: Publichnoe prodvizhenie (sovetskikh) semeinykh ‘relikvii’ v optike kul’turno-pokolencheskikh razryvov,” in Puti Rossii. Budushchee kak kultura: prognozy, reprezentatsii, stsenarii, eds. Pugacheva, Marina G. and Vakhshtain, Victor S. (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2011), 322–38.Google Scholar

78. For an impressive comparative analysis of Russian and German development over the twentieth century, see Eimermakher, Karl et al., eds., Rossiia i Germaniia v 20 veke (Moscow: AIRO-XXI, 2010 Google Scholar), 3 vols.

79. For example, see: Liudmila Shaporina, V., Dnevnik, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2012 Google Scholar), 2 vols.; Konstantin N. Teplukhov, Memuary: 1899-1934 (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2011).

80. On the daily lives of representatives of prerevolutionary elites in the Soviet Union, see: Vihavainen, Timo, ed., Normy i tsennosti povsednevnoi zhizni: stanovlenie sotsialisticheskogo obraza zhizni, 1920-1930 gody (Saint Petersburg: Neva, 2000 Google Scholar); Chuikina, Sofiia, Dvorianskaia pamiat’: “byvshie” v sovetskom gorode (Leningrad, 1920-e-1930-e gody) (Saint Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Evropeiskogo universiteta, 2006).Google Scholar

81. For example, see Shaporina, Dnevnik, 1:225. Her notes from 1938 are as follows: “Previously, objects were handed down from one generation to another, archives were preserved, and history was created. Now, the present negates the day before, today we shoot yesterday’s leaders, and the entire past is destroyed in the minds of the young. My papa taught me to honor all those little pieces of paper, those notes from the past.”

82. For example, see Maria Ferretti’s important thoughts on workers’ protests against Stalinism during the interwar years, which radically challenge conventional views about the extent of opposition in the USSR in the late twenties and early thirties: Ferretti, Maria, “Iaroslavskii rabochii Vasilii Ivanovich Liulin,” Rossiia XXI 5 (2011): 154–89.Google Scholar